Forms, web forms and information

What information do you really need from your customers and more importantly what do your customers or clients want from you.

I am often asked to write web forms that ask an enormous amount of information from the person filling it in. This is normally when companies have been using paper forms and are moving to web forms. Often they look like this!

This is a little tongue in cheek but it does raise questions about the type and content of form fields

Form could not be loaded. Contact the site administrator.

This is probably more like it..

Form could not be loaded. Contact the site administrator.

But I need to mail someone something. I want the details for my database!

Most people. Including the person wanting people to fill out all that information do not want to give out details to you unless there is a very good reason. Wanting it in your database is not a good enough reason.